NEW DELHI: A Department of Telecom survey through automated calls has found around 8 per cent reduction in call drop complaints over the last 10 months, telecom minister Manoj Sinha informed the Rajya Sabha.

"TSPs (telecom service providers) have resolved approximately 50,770 individual cases by taking remedial actions until October 31, 2017 and the call drops reported by individual subscribers have shown a drop of over 8 per cent in the last 10 months," Sinha said in the Rajya Sabha last week.

According to the data shared by Sinha, the Department of Telecom received 2,622 call drop complaints against state- run firm BSNL, 2,597 against Bharti Airtel, 1,309 Vodafone, 1,251 Reliance Communications, 946 Reliance Jio, 802 Idea Cellular, 473 MTNL and 255 complaint against Aircel between January 1, 2015 and December 6, 2017.

Separately, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India received 546 call drop complaints against Airtel, 346 against Vodafone, 166 against Idea, 157 against RCom, 70 against BSNL, and 37 against Aircel during January 1, 2015 to December 8, 2017. Twenty-six complaints against Reliance Jio and 19 against MTNL were received during the period.

The minister said the government made sufficient spectrum available for mobile services including auction of 965 MHz in 2016 to help companies reduce call drops.

It held periodic review of expansion of mobile networks and related improvements carried out by the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) which lead to addition of around 6.35 lakh additional base transceiver stations (or mobile sites) on aggregate basis for 2G,3G and 4G services during the period- July 2015 to November 2017.

"TRAI benchmarks for call drop rates have been amended with effect from October 1, 2017 to help identifying local areas where cell(s) have not performed well for many days and also to identify day(s) on which many cells in the network of a service provider have not performed well," Sinha said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) pulled up Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea for warning subscribers of certain plans that their SIM cards would be deactivated if they do not recharge their pre-paid accounts though these subscribers had the minimum required balance.